Jennifer Yoffy  00:08

Welcome to perfect bound, a podcast where we talk to artists about their journey, how they got where they are, what right and wrong turns they made along the way and where they're heading next. Matt is a photographic essayist working on long form projects related to memory, family community and the American condition.

Matt got his undergraduate degree in photojournalism from Ohio University, and received his MFA in photography from Hartford art schools International Limited residency program. He now teaches full time at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University. Matt was one of the founding members of the groundbreaking photographic collective Lucio in his work has received numerous grants and recognitions. He has exhibited his work in 20 solo shows, plus many festivals and group exhibitions. His prints and books are held in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the New York Public Library, Chrysler Museum of Art and others.

And then there are his books! He is the author of four monographs carry me, Ohio. I love you. I'm leaving sin and salvation and Baptist town and the seven cities. He also co authored the book days before days after with Jared saurez, and has published several genes and small run artists books under his own imprint, little oak press. Matt lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife and two daughters, whom you have no doubt seen stunning images of woven throughout his work.

Matt Eich - Let's get started!

Jennifer Yoffy  01:48

When I was looking through your work, something that kept coming into my mind was how it doesn't seem to fit squarely into one genre. You went to school for photojournalism. And then your most recent bio describes you as a photographic essayist, which I love that description. And I was wondering if it's been challenging to find the right terminology to describe your work, or has that sort of evolved over time.

Matt Eich  02:16

I mean, it certainly evolved. And this is something that I've been in conversations with students about because I think there is a certain degree of comfort that comes from self identifying. As an artist, you know, early on, like having a title that you can apply to yourself and your work, I am a blank. In the more kind of narrow you can describe your practice, the more comforting that feels it's like a glove or something that as you progress through making, then it starts to feel more like a box where the walls are closing in on you and your escape that box, right. And you realize that the labels are more useful for curators and for other people who aren't makers who are trying to define or describe, but what you're generally engaged in is trying to deal with things that are hard to describe. And that's why we photograph instead of write.

Jennifer Yoffy  03:17

You are a beautiful writer, though, having read some of your stuff. And that's not that common.

Matt Eich  03:22

Well, it's certainly something that I've admired. And some of my favorite photographers, Eugene Richards, Larry Sultan, Susan Worsham. Like they're all very strong writers. And that's not something that I consider to be a natural trait for me. So it's something that has to come with a lot of sweat equity, and usually some outside eyes and opinions on things before I feel comfortable with them. I feel loosely comfortable with photographic essayist, documentary photographer, photographer. And at one point, I had to write a statement in which I said, "I'm not an artist". And now I, you know, look back on that, like, I was naive and very silly. Because artists is something that didn't feel natural to me for a long time. But I've been more comfortable with that term, I guess over the last couple years, but I'm uncomfortable with the term photojournalist because it is too limiting to encapsulate what I do though. I studied photojournalism for undergrad and I teach undergraduate photojournalism courses. Now, that's not a good definition of my practice at this juncture.

Jennifer Yoffy  04:36

So the photographic essayist can incorporate some aspects of photojournalism but also have more. It sounds more lyrical, maybe. So that could encompass your fine art work as well.

Matt Eich  04:48

Yeah. And that was something that I think I was. It was being signaled to me at a fairly early stage where I would take pictures to a magazine and they'd say, "Oh, this looks they might belong in a gallery", and then you take them to the gallery and they say, "Oh, this looks like they might belong in a magazine", and then you realize, like, nobody thinks your work belongs there. So it's kind of in this orphan existence. Right?

Jennifer Yoffy  05:11

Right. Middle ground.

Matt Eich  05:13

Yeah. Having to become okay with that. And I think, again, there was history of, you know, really solid demarcation lines between art, commercial photojournalism, and definitely in the last 10 years. But even more in the last two to five, we've seen those boundaries and barriers collapsing in the ways that places commissioned work, where commercial outfits are looking for artists to bring their unique vision to a brand and editorial outlets are also looking for kind of new voices and visions that can communicate about some of the more complicated stories that we've got going on. Yeah, I don't know, it's hard to figure out where your work belongs these days. But I guess, become less and less interested in worrying over that and just trying to focus on making and figure that somebody else will slap a label on it and tell me where it belongs. Because that's always been the way that it goes, You know, I can't really control any of that. Okay, continuing

Jennifer Yoffy  06:22

along the lines of how you speak about your work. In a 2014 interview, you were asked to describe your photography in three words, and you said spontaneous emotional cacophony. Does that description still apply?

Matt Eich  06:36

I mean, that that does seem like an "of the moment" response. The words are still descriptive of the way in which I work. I try to respond to things kind of in the moment, instead of preconceiving when I'm going to make. But I've been trying to slow down and be a bit more thoughtful and methodical in the way that I work of late. So I feel like I am shifting. Evolving. Yeah, I'm trying to find more peace and tranquility and less cacophony. But, I mean, it's certainly, you know, a thread of, of life in America, of life as a parent trying to juggle the needs of children and the needs of art making, cacophony is constantly part of it.

Jennifer Yoffy  07:37

Well, cacophony is a pretty good intro into my next question... You were really into music growing up, and you played in a few bands with musicians in high school. And I was wondering if that band mentality where you were with a group of like-minded people, and you were all working together towards a shared goal, if that played into your desire to form and be a part of LUCEO.

Matt Eich  08:05

Definitely, it felt like a very natural kind of way of pooling resources and energy. And I still think about that feeling that occurs when a group of artists, but specifically, musicians are getting together and in this kind of freeform jam, sort of way, start making something together. And when you collectively realize like, Oh, shit, we're doing it, like there's something happening, like that feeling is really hard to replicate in any other context. And the idea that, of course, like multiple parts come together to create something greater something can't be achieved on an individual kind of level. So it felt really natural, though, the irony is like, at the end of high school, when I felt like I had to choose between music and photography, one of the things that drove me to photography was feeling a bit burned out on the band drama, and, you know, like, trying to manage all of these different egos, and personalities and kind of individual wants and needs,

Jennifer Yoffy  09:14

"So I'll work with artists because..."

Matt Eich  09:16

haha -right! That'll be easier.

Jennifer Yoffy  09:19

"they're stable"

Matt Eich  09:20

Right? So in a lot of ways, LUCEO was, you know, a photographic band, you know, individual image makers that came together, seeking some sort of collective goal and communication. And at its best it was that, you know, at its worst, it was probably some of the same things that tripped up a lot of bands, you know, where individual wants or needs may have gotten in the way of the greater group's goal or mission, but I'm still really grateful for all of those individuals and the things that we were able to accomplish as a group and still miss that sense of community and camaraderie.

Jennifer Yoffy  10:01

I can imagine.  Switching gears to your long term projects. The Invisible Yoke was conceived as four volumes. Carry Me Ohio, Sin and Salvation in Baptist Town, The Seven Cities and the yet-to-be-published We the Free. So that's four distinct monographs you've been working on over the course of what, four, five years?

Matt Eich  10:28

Yeah. So in terms of the publishing of these books, yeah, that that'll play out between 16 and 21. If everything stays on track for this year, you know, but the work itself was made over a period of 14-15 years, and varying depending on the project. So currently, Ohio is 10, Sin and Salvation, seven, The Seven Cities, 14 years. And yeah, this final book will probably be about 14 years kind of encapsulated in the covers.

Jennifer Yoffy  11:01

So even though you've been turning out monographs over a relatively short amount of time, you've also created new work and published more books. I Love You, I'm Leaving, the collaborative project with Zatara Press. And you even started your own imprint, Little Oak Press. So do you find that you're developing projects kind of always in the background, almost subconsciously. And then they get to a certain inflection point where you realize, oh, I've really got something here? Or do they each start with an idea that has a specific intentionality and set of parameters?

Matt Eich  11:41

Yeah, it's, it's a lot more after the fact, and in my processes, mostly intuitive, and pretty slow. You know, a lot of times I'm making something and I, I never know what I'm making when I'm making it. Like, let's just be clear, I don't really go outside. This is the picture I'm going to make today, let me go fulfill this expectation, I'm looking for a surprise and serendipity and collecting things into these piles and kind of sorting them a little bit here and there. And then, you know, in constant communication with peers, and colleagues that are helping me kind of sift through these piles, so that some things rise to the surface. And I'm just trying to make on a regular basis. So a lot of folks, the pandemic has majorly tripped me up in that regard, like I've continued making in a limited capacity, but it wasn't in any means on the scale or scope that I hoped for in the last year. That's the way it goes. So if we jump back to the beginning, like Carry Me, Ohio started as a series of kind of individual stories about like one family here and one family there and one community here and one community there. And then one of my friends and classmates was in the editing room and our house, I shared a house with a couple other photographers in undergrad. And we had one room kind of dedicated to working on editing projects. And he was like, hey, this song, Carry Me Ohio by Sun Kill Moon, give it a listen, while you're looking at these pictures, look at them together think about how they function as a unit. And I was familiar with the song. But I hadn't really thought about, again, kind of knocking down these mental barriers between the different bodies of work, and then viewing them as one. So I did that. And that was an aha moment. And, you know, a few years later, we moved to Virginia and I started making what started as an assignment in Mississippi and then coming back and kind of living with those pictures and look at them. And I was there's some parallels between what I was making in Ohio and what I'm making in Mississippi. What's that about? Maybe part of it is, you know, the nature of the assignment. But I think it's more a reflection of what I'm drawn to as an individual. What does that say about me? And my subconscious? Where is this coming from? And so it's this process of kind of digging deeper, deeper, deeper into yourself and into your psyche, and asking questions that typically don't have answers and going back out with a camera and asking more questions and not hoping to really achieve any resolution to them. But one of the things was kind of driven into us in grad school is the pictures are smarter than you are. Listen to them. They'll tell you where to go.

Jennifer Yoffy  14:35

So you're out you're making pictures, then you're coming back and looking at them and realizing that they're telling you almost what you're curious about, which then piques your curiosity more to go back and continue to dig into that question.

Matt Eich  14:52

And eventually you have to find a house or a structure to put the pictures in, right, because they're, I don't know, moldable? Pictures can be kind of like morphed into different shapes and forms depending on the context or the structure that you provide for them.

Jennifer Yoffy  15:16

You've published with different publishers, The Invisible Yoke series is with Sturm and Dram, and then I Love You, I'm Leaving with Ceiba Editions. You did a collaborative book with Zatara Press, and then you have your own imprint, Little Oak Press. So how do you decide which book is right for which publisher?

Matt Eich  15:40

That's a good question. And something I've been kind of playing by ear as we go. I can't say that I've planned out much of anything when it comes to publishing, you know, far in advance. So like, I am coming to the end of a notebook that I've been keeping for the last 12 years. I think I started in 2012, shortly before my daughter was born. And as I flipped back, I found a note from a portfolio review with an Aperture editor that happened, you know, eight years ago at this point, in which I was presenting this idea for three books at the time, it was before I realized The Invisible Yoke was going to be four books. And the feedback from this editor was that a box set of books would be too artsy and too fussy. I was like, Okay, cool. So I'm going to, I did this residency at Lightwork in 2013. So the year after that, and I decided to bring all four chapters together under one roof, and created this maquette, which I self-published,

Jennifer Yoffy  16:47

 Your first Carry Me Ohio was self published?

Matt Eich  16:51

Yes. And that was in 2010, using my wife's student loan money so that we could make a small catalog to accompany the first solo show of that work, which was actually my first solo show, It was in 2010. And then those sold pretty quickly, and I kept a handful of copies to try and place in libraries. And we adapted that to be a kind of Blurb formatted book, added few new photographs that I've made since the first edition was published, and then entered that in the Blurb photography book competition. Again, maybe around 2011, something like that. 2012. Okay. And I guess one of those copies ended up in Arcana books, which is a art book store that specializes in photo books that's in Culver City outside of LA. And when I was in grad school, and maybe late 2014, I got an email from Reto Caduff from Sturm and Drang saying, "Hey, I found this blurb book in a bookstore in California and I'd like to publish it."

Jennifer Yoffy  18:02

Oh my gosh, that is a dream.

Matt Eich  18:05

It was a little weird. And, you know, like, being new to this whole thing at the time, a distinct memory of, you know, I was not really ready to jump into action with it, and probably looking for reasons to not do it. And so, as a test, you know, I was like, you know, I'm glad you're interested in publishing this work. I don't want to really work with anybody that I haven't met in person. And I'm really thinking about this as a four part series of monographs. What do you think? And he was like, well, I live in Switzerland, but I can meet you in Berlin when you're there for grad school. And I'm into the idea of four books. And I thought, Okay, well, like what what other roadblocks can I throw in now? And I had this conversation with a professor in a bar in Berlin, and I was like, should I do this? Should I not? And he said, grab the unicorn by the horns and ride it into the sunset. And I was like, Okay, I guess that's what I'll do then.

Jennifer Yoffy  19:11

Phenomenal.

Matt Eich  19:12

So I've been working with Reto ever since and I really appreciate his support and understanding of this process. He's been really patient and a great collaborator. And then, you know, I kind of entered grad school thinking that most of my energy was going to be focused on this series of books. But as we discussed a little bit kind of shifted into making a different kind of work. So you know, I came in making work about America and other people's lives and communities and kind of pushed away from that towards making more introspective family photographs and we were required to make a book maquette. At least for graduation. I think we had to have a minimum of two or three copies.

Jennifer Yoffy  19:59

The Hartford program is very book focused, right?

Matt Eich  20:04

Yeah. And that was one of the things that drew me to it, because that is still probably my favorite form for expressing myself photographically. And certainly one of the greatest educational tools that I've encountered over the years is just collecting other people's books and studying those. So I was excited about that prospect in a bit, I try and find people that I like to work with, and then work with them a lot. So I brought the grad work to Deb Davis, the designer that I worked with on the Carry Me Ohio limited edition, and on The Invisible Yoke maquette. And Deb was really busy at the time. And she suggested that I hit up, Eva Marie Coons, who is the founder of Ceiba Editions and so I started talking with them. And essentially, it came down to I don't think I could afford to pay them, you know, as as a, like, a one-off book, you know, to make something small. So the deal that I made with Ava was that she would help me making a maquette for graduation. And I would allow them to publish the work in a kind of small addition after the work was done, which was good because I had these grand ideas of like, I'm going to make 50 copies of the book for grad school. But then as I'm getting closer to the finish line, I realized that I was just beginning to hit my photographic stride. And I still didn't have the framework that I wanted for it. And so to try

Jennifer Yoffy  21:37

In this project, specifically, you mean?

Matt Eich  21:39

Yeah, the I Love You, I'm Leaving work, like I hadn't arrived at that title yet. And I still wasn't happy with the title that I had. It's funny, that title actually kind of came from me writing a letter to photography or about photography, being like, "Fuck you, I'm out". I was in grad school and really disillusioned with the medium at that moment, and I'm finding myself in a similar place right now, you know, just always kind of running up against the limitations of what you can do and frustrations with how the medium is often misused or misinterpreted. And, you know, it's a lot to try and reckon with. So yeah, that work came together during grad school but wasn't complete. When grad school was completed, that was kind of too finite a timeline. And so I let it continue to kind of evolve organically for about a year after school wrapped up and then we published that book. And so the way things have kind of spaced out, Carry Me Ohio came out in 2016. I l Love You, I'm Leaving came out in 2017, 2018. I did Sin and  Salvation in Baptist Town with Sturm and Drang, which was the second part of The Invisible Yolk series that same year, I also did the collaborative book with Jared Soares through Zatara. And that one came about just because the publisher approached and said, Do you have anything you're working on, and Jared, and I had been doing a kind of collaborative back and forth for a number of years, but hadn't really found the home for that work yet, but it was ready to be shaped and we had enough to draw from. And then that, you know, that felt like a bit of a detour from what I've been working on, because the work was unpeopled, and, you know, but it's still connected to a lot of threads and themes of the other work that I was making. It was nice to be able to take a beat to think about something that was a little bit different. And then not something that you didn't spend,

Jennifer Yoffy  23:46

As opposed to being like, if you haven't looked at it for a decade, it's not even close.

Matt Eich  23:53

Yeah, I mean, the pictures for that book were drawn from a long period of time but the overall making of the book was a lot more compressed. And then I started the full time teaching position in the fall of 2019. And we were hoping to put The Seven Cities out in the fall, but nothing goes according to plan and publishing, especially while teaching and so the book came out during the middle of the pandemic, which also wasn't something that we had planned. But you know, that's just how it goes sometimes. And now, we're plugging along on the fourth and final volume, but still massively behind schedule. Haven't nailed down any writers yet. Still got about? Yeah, about 13 years of stuff to wade through piece by piece.

Jennifer Yoffy  24:46

Have you found that it's been a completely different experience working with the three different publishers or do they feel similar and then also, tell me a little bit about Little Oak Press and how you decide what's going to come out through your own imprint?

Matt Eich  25:02

Yeah, I mean, every publisher brings their own kind of vision and personality to the mix. And I'm always really interested in collaborating with people and seeing what they gravitate towards. And I think the longer I work with people, the more we kind of understand one another's rhythms and tastes, you know, so, Reto at Sturm and Drang is the person that I've worked with the most consistently on publishing things. And so at this point, we've got a rhythm of like, I bring a big pile of pictures, and I send that to Mike Davis. And then Mike whittles that down to a few hundred. And then those few hundred go to Reto. And then he shows me kind of what his favorites are, and I'm finding what my favorites are and, and then I'm advocating for ones that he didn't like, and he's advocating for ones that I didn't like.

Jennifer Yoffy  25:54

That negotiation is one of my favorite parts.

Matt Eich  25:57

Yeah, it's it's fun, you know, I mean, like, Huh, I guess I didn't really see this thing that they see in this picture. So learning how to read your own photographs is part of the process. And then there's the work print stage and putting them on the wall, which is my favorite part.

Jennifer Yoffy  26:13

Is that a magnetic wall?

Matt Eich  26:17

Yeah, two, sheet metal pieces kind of joined in the middle here that take up most of this studio wall.

Jennifer Yoffy  26:24

That's a pro move right there.

Matt Eich  26:27

Let's see at that stage, I guess we start playing around in InDesign around that same time, you know, so it's kind of work in between wall and screen, and sharing stuff back and forth. And that's usually about where I get my friends and colleagues involved and seeing if there's holes or gaps or, you know, roadblocks in the sequencing that we're dealing with. And eventually, through a lot of pushing and pulling, we end up in a final form. The Little Oak Press stuff that you asked about, has been a bit of a another kind of detour in, in this process, because it's really tedious, making a real hard cover book, and putting that into the world, trying to find press for it and all of that stuff. And especially during the pandemic, you know, and even leading up to the pandemic, I've been going through an elongated existential funk, you know, where, again, kind of wrestling with what is photography? What can it be? What should it be? How am I using it? How should I be using it? Am I doing this right? Should I quit daily questions.

Jennifer Yoffy  27:38

And having committed to The Invisible Yoke as a four book thing, such a long time ago, relatively, do you feel like you're in a position now where you're ready to evolve to a new way of looking at things, but you're still tied into finishing it out the old way?

Matt Eich  27:59

That's very much real. Like I haven't used a 35 millimeter camera for personal work in probably two years. That that's what all of that work is made with is 35 millimeter color digital. And these days, I'm definitely mixing and more analog and there's color, and there's black and white. Everything's been medium format. And over the break, I went up to DC and snagged a large format camera. And honestly, I don't know if I'm ready for this yet, but I'm going to try. So there is that kind of urge to evolve and the need to try different visual languages. But um, you know, of course, still resolving this other work. And I'm grateful that I have the time and the place to do that. So that it doesn't feel like that's hanging over my head. But yes, I'm kind of ready to put that to bed and move on with other creative forms of expression.

Jennifer Yoffy  29:03

Well, your work focuses on documenting American lives, especially those that have been disenfranchised. So I'm wondering, has this urge to evolve the way you see and the way you make work been influenced at all by the turbulent political landscape or the last four years? Or is it coming from a different place?

Matt Eich  29:22

It's a confluence of things, right? Like when I was making The Invisible Yoke work, I started out pretty naive and very energetic and excited to see everything and not to say that I'm old and tired, but I'm getting older and I'm getting more tired. And I don't have quite the same energy that I did. And I spent a lot of time away from my family when when I was in my early to mid 20s. And my girls are getting older now. I've got a teenager in the house, you know, like, especially now when they're doing virtual learning, they need me to be here, I just don't have the flexibility to run about that I used to. So there's, you know, personal shifts and professional shifts in terms of who's commissioning, and what they're supporting and grants that you receive to do the work like, without some form of support, it's kind of like screaming into the void, you know, there's only so much I can do on my own. So I'm really grateful for the time that I've had to make The Invisible Yoke work of trying to bring that to some sort of completed form, but knowing that you will probably have to revisit or rethink it, at some point further down the line. And as somebody who tried to make my living off of the editorial, the broken editorial model for 14 years, this time, teaching with a full time job has allowed me to kind of step off the hamster wheel and reexamine things a little bit with a little distance or a little removed from that system. And, again, begin to kind of identify some of the problems in the industry and the problems in just like the speed of working prevents you from really thinking about things.

Jennifer Yoffy  31:17

So part of that intentionality that you were talking about, less cacophony, more thinking, maybe, and reflecting.  You've made several big decisions throughout your career so far, forming a collective, leaving the collective to work solo, going back to grad school starting to teach full time, what would you say was your biggest wrong turn? And what did you learn from it?

Matt Eich  31:43

That's a great question. That's one I'll probably have to think on a little bit. I don't know if you made the wrong turn, usually until much later. I can't say there's anything that I'm, you know, looking back that I really, really deeply regret. That I don't think I've valued the work I was making. And the way that I should have perhaps, and something that I'm trying to drive home to my students is like, we as Young Makers think that these publications are doing us a big favor, you know, to publish our work. But we don't think about the potential for damage it could do to the communities we've documented or the relationships we've built there. So I guess looking back, one thing I do regret was allowing the Baptist Town work to be published by an editorial outlet that took it and shaped it into a very convenient kind of like white and black, rich and poor in the south sort of narrative. And this, the narrative that they conveyed wasn't untrue, but it was oversimplified and lacked nuance. And it's something that I've realized more and more as I've gone is, yeah, all of these outlets are typically trying to use clickbait to drive traffic. And the more controversial it is, the better it is for them. And the worse it is for the maker.

Jennifer Yoffy  33:10

a misrepresentation of what you're trying to say

Matt Eich  33:15

Right. And, you know, at the very least, is going to burn bridges that you've built over years of, you know, trust building in the community. So that's something that I try and drive home to the students is it's a cost benefit, or risk reward kind of calculation, they need to make. Some big name publication comes to you and says, "We love what you're making here. We want to publish it." Great, good for you celebrate that, be excited. But think about it critically, like what could go wrong? How do you kind of circumnavigate that or, like, prevent that from going wrong?

Jennifer Yoffy  33:54

Okay, following up on that, in hindsight, what was the best decision you made? And did you see it that way at the time?

Matt Eich  34:03

I think I'm probably too in the middle of things to know what that is at the moment. I mean, the best decision was probably going into the study photojournalism at Ohio University and meeting my wife and like, starting a family and sticking with that, despite all challenges, so professionally speaking, yeah, I don't really know. You just try and make the best decisions you can in the moment and always asking peers and colleagues like, how do you feel about this? Does this the sound right? Does it not? That I think that we all need to be pretty self critical of how we function in the world, how our work functions in the world, how we're thinking about it, how we're making it and realizing that our intentions won't save us. You know, once the pictures are made, and in the world, they don't belong to you anymore, really, like it's up to the viewer to bring their own reading and interpretation to it. So we have to craft images very thoughtfully and we have to disseminate them really thoughtfully, too. And that is the exact opposite of the culture that we're living in right now, which is just like, boom, I made it there, it goes out the door, no thought like, no here like "no filter". And I just can't function, I can't get down with that anymore. So I've been wanting to pull further and further back from this kind of instant consumerism culture. The Internet's a great resource for a lot of things. But it's also a black hole for sharing your work. It's not how my work is meant to be seen or interacted with - maybe on the wall, but really, in book form. That's kind of how it's meant. But that's going to be a continued push over the next few years, I think it's sort of the process of disappearing so that I can be less distracted by all of that noise and just focus on making.

Jennifer Yoffy  35:58

So I have one last question for you. This podcast is really about the journey where you went right, where you went wrong. And I think most people would look at you - the arc of your career, your accomplishments and consider you to be really successful. And I'm wondering, do you feel that way? Do you wake up in the morning and think, "I'm nailing this"? Or do you feel like there's still a lot you want to learn and achieve?

Matt Eich  36:28

And this was another conversation that I have with friends and colleagues and students, but like, you never really wake up and feel like, oh, I've suddenly arrived, you know, or at least that's not a sensation I'm familiar with. There might be little kind of pit stops of success along the way, but it's really an uphill climb. I don't feel like I've done that much. I have to remind myself to breathe and be a human being and just be okay with it. A lot of days, to be patient with myself, you'd asked a little bit earlier about Little Oak Press and kind of how that functions within this broader ecosystem of publishing. Because putting pictures on paper and, you know, between two covers and out into the world, that's my preferred form of communication. I realized that Little Oak Press . . .so it started more formally in 2019 through the encouragement of Jared Soares, because he was tired of hearing me complaining about, you know, the, the death of the industry and lack of ability to use work in a meaningful way and all of that stuff, and he was like, just make something man. You know, I was pretty depressed at the time. "Just make something and see what that does." So I made this little zine with a collection of pictures from the year prior. And it was called, Does Anyone Dare Despise This Day of Small Beginnings. And that kicked off the Seasonal Blues series, which began with winter 2019. And so I've done five of those now through winter of 2020, working on volume six, which is spring, and then summer, and then fall, and I think I'm gonna hit a pause on that. These are just little, you know, softcover magazines basically, that they have enough pictures to be a book link to work mostly that kind of drawing disparate images from a season, that's the only rule was they had to be made between this day in this day, mark in the beginning, the end of the season. And I'm thinking about these specifically, it's kind of like a batting cage or a test chamber for how these pictures function together, right. And with the knowledge that they'll probably exist in a different form later. And I think that's the primary function of Little Oak Press at this moment, but I want it to evolve into something else. And then I have gotten a couple more heavy book maquettes, like I did one for Say Hello to Everybody, Okay, which is a six-year body of work. And that was a stepping stone towards finding a traditional publisher for it. Because I could only afford to do a limited edition run, I did 25 copies, and then sold enough to break even, and then sending PDFs to my top publisher choices and kind of waiting now to see if anybody bites on that. If not, then maybe I'll self publish it in a couple years if I can find the funds for it. At least for now, it's provided an outlet to kind of express myself and experiment with things. And we'll see where that leads. But for now, it's been nice to have an outlet. When I feel like I can't be out making pictures in the world in the way that I would like to be. I can always be hunkered down here trying to shape them into some form that makes sense.

Jennifer Yoffy  40:00

Right. You can kind of channel that creative practice in a different way.

Matt Eich  40:06

Creative angst, yeah.

Jennifer Yoffy  40:09

Well, I really appreciate you talking with me. This has been awesome and great to catch up and connect.

Matt Eich  40:18

I appreciate you making time to chat and you know for your interest in the work and encouragement along the way, as always. Exciting to see what y'all are up to down in Atlanta as well and always happy to see that you're continuing to roll books out and expand the Yoffy universe.

Jennifer Yoffy  40:43

Thank you all for tuning in to the perfect bound podcast, and we'll catch you next time.